The poke test comment is 3/4 right. It depends on the cut, it depends on several factors, but experience tells, and yeah, I do a poke test, but then again, I cook steaks a bit more often than most folks. A professional's experience though, sometimes you do a sneak and peek, if you're not as familiar with the cut, or you have a fairly large piece, then a thermometer is your friend. A New York isn't the same as a ribeye, and they cook slightly differently, and you have to practice a bit to get to know the feel, and it doesn't hurt to know the cut, and if you're the one doing the butchery, that helps. I cut a lot of ribeye and New Yorks, and each slab is a bit different, and it comes down to experience and knowing the cut to do a poke test. It's not so cut and dried as folks seem to think.

Hmmm -- lots of pansies who insist on cooking their meat to some temperature so they dont get sick...

I cant recall ever having gotten sick from steak -- turkey yes but steak never. And i'm a good alberta boy from a farm -- steak was and still is a regualr food and its not crazy to have it once or twice a week during the summer.

Mmmm -- Let me tell you -- wood fire works the best -- the flames spit up at the dripping fat just right to melt and render it all -- not a touch of gristly chew crap. I cant tell you how much i hate seeing someone slice the fatty edge off their steak. Tragic. Its the best damn part if you do it right...

Dont flip your steak over and over -- 99% of people will jab a fork or something in the meat to do so and putting holes in it while its cooking is just draining it of juice. The heat is going to push all the juices through those holes every time you make them so dont do it.

As for bringing it up to temperature -- take it out of the fridge in the morning -- salt and pepper the meat portion lightly and the white fatty parts very heavily. Then wrap it in saran (tight) and leave it on the counter on a plate. The salt needs time to move through the meat and the fat is packed with water and the salt needs time to draw that out. Moisture is what makes that fatty part so tough and you can turn it into the best damn part of your steak by treating it carefully with extra salt. It will also render better leaving it healthier.

And honestly -- dont worry about the internal temperature. Just cook it how you like it. If you cant do that like an old hand then cook more steakums. I know i know -- ecoli or some crap will kill me. Well frankly store bought greens seem to be the bigger culprit in killing people by ecoli and nobody suggests cooking them to the right temp...

Seriously -- use steakunms -- Go buy a cheap pack of stewing beef and cook it peice by peice on a cast iron pan. Have some good dipping sauces ready (they are stew beef chunks -- not ribeye -- sauce is alright here) practice searing those little guys one by one and then eating while you go. Practice makes perfect and stew beef is cheap and when you sear it up in a really hot cast iron they come out like tiny steaks.

Unless you work in a restaurant dont worry about the internal temp. Just grill the sob and if its too cooked then next time cook it less. And if its undercooked you can throw it back on the grill or into the oven for a bit. But i wouldn't. Learn to appreciate undercooked steak. After awhile you wont consider it undercooked - its 'perfect'

myth #9a million morons will post here with their anecdotal evidence that they will pretend is the same thing as fact.for example, the first contestant already is QQing about the poke test.sorry, but unless you have a lot of experience, poking = guessing.

myth #10no one on the planet cares about your sauce or skillz. unless you are cooking at my house for free, yawnnnnn. isnt there a food site somewhere where you are king?

This guy is full of shiat. He has contradicted several things touted by certified chefs, and I saw nothing to indicate that he is one. Also, My flip-a-holic father made awful steaks I could barely choke down when I was a kid. When I make them and turn them only once, they are good.

After you cook a couple a dozen steaks a day for years, you figure a couple of things out about them. First, all steaks behave differently--it's nature, not McDonalds. So any rules are, essentially, useless. Next, after awhile you can look at a steak and figure out its doneness by the amount of liquid on its surface. When in doubt a good thermometer will tell you where it's at. As for when to season, if you can tell the difference between a steak seasoned before, after, or during cooking you are either an idiot savant or lying. The only golden rule re cooking is to stop cooking it a little before the desired doneness and let it rest 5 minutes or so.

That being said, a good steak is about sourcing, not cooking. There is nothing to cooking them, so you need to find a consistent supplier that isn't fudging on the number of days it was aged. Basically most steaks the general public eats are not dry aged, so they are staring with an inferior product, and will end up with a pretty bland meal. Even Costco "prime" meat is a waste of money unless aged. Go out and get a 32 day dry aged NY and you will see what I mean.

All steak must be medium-well, which looks like TFA writer's version of "well". That is not a well-done steak, a well-done steak is not farking red inside, it's a very pale pink. I had to open the image on my other screen just to make sure I wasn't seeing things.

His idea of "rare" is just farking raw. I don't understand people who eat raw meat, they must be those people who still have Neanderthal DNA.

abhorrent1:Myth #1: "You should let a thick steak rest at room temperature before you cook it."The Reality: While it's true that slowly bringing a steak up to its final serving temperature will promote more even cooking.

And that's where I stopped reading. Does this farking person know what "Myth" means?

He went on to say that letting it sit at room temperature for any reasonable length of time doesn't bring the core up to serving temperature.

I really enjoy when my waiter brother in law is chowing down on McDonalds telling me about how his customers have absolutely no taste or understanding of steak because they ordered it X or Y way with Z condiment.

myth #9a million morons will post here with their anecdotal evidence that they will pretend is the same thing as fact.for example, the first contestant already is QQing about the poke test.sorry, but unless you have a lot of experience, poking = guessing.

Pretty much. Cook a few thousand steaks, and you can guess pretty well. And even then, if you are working with a cut you're not familiar with, it takes some getting used to. Hanger steaks were a learning curve, because the texture is a little odd. There are a lot of factors. I do 20-40 steaks a night on average, and maybe twice that on a Friday and Saturday, and you get to know your cook times fairly well. I will disagree with the "flip often" comment in the article, but again, that's from a professional standpoint--cooking is the gentle art of leaving sh*t alone to do its thing. I don't like rearranging my grill too often, and part of that is simple math on how many actions I can perform in a minute, how many plates I can set up, how many tickets I can call off, and it's more a matter of time management. Screwing around with steaks, and flipping and reflipping, and resetting, that's less time to do the work necessary to get plates and tickets off my board. Most home cooks aren't doing 200 plates a night, and that is what sets professionals apart--it's about time management and efficiency. A home cook can afford to screw around a bit, a chef, not so much. There are time constraints, and that means that prep is an important part of things. Setting steaks out to "rest" before they go on the grill, not exactly conducive to getting tickets out of the window. Letting steaks rest after cooking, that IS important, and that has to do with how the muscle fibers react with heat, and letting a steak rest after cooking is what you want, unless you want folks to have a mess on the plate.

myth #9a million morons will post here with their anecdotal evidence that they will pretend is the same thing as fact.for example, the first contestant already is QQing about the poke test.sorry, but unless you have a lot of experience, poking = guessing.

myth #10no one on the planet cares about your sauce or skillz. unless you are cooking at my house for free, yawnnnnn. isnt there a food site somewhere where you are king?

myth #11 - charcoal is better than gas. Most people can't get charcoal to provide even temperature, so the steak cooks unevenly. Gas is better.